Some existing energy management systems can be used to control operations of vehicle systems during a trip to “optimize” performance of the vehicle systems. For example, Trip Optimizer™ provided by General Electric Company can be used to automatically control throttles of locomotives in a rail vehicle system to assist in keeping the rail vehicle systems on schedule while reducing fuel consumption and/or emission generation (relative to operating the locomotives without using Trip Optimizer™). These types of energy management systems can take into account factors such as length of the rail vehicle system, weight of the rail vehicle system, grade of the route being traveled upon, conditions of the route, weather conditions, and performance characteristics of the vehicles. The energy management systems create trip profiles or trip plans that reduce braking and can reduce the fuel consumed and/or emissions generated.
The data that is input into the energy management system can include the vehicles that are included in the rail vehicle system. Building the rail vehicle systems by determining an order of non-propulsion-generating vehicles (e.g., railcars) in the rail vehicle system, the propulsion-generating vehicles included in the rail vehicle system, and/or using distributed power (DP) controls can further decrease fuel consumption. Toward this end, some vehicle yards (e.g., rail yards) include yard planning systems that determine the vehicles assigned to a vehicle system by following various rules, such as block ordering, handling rules, or the like. These yard planning systems, however, may not assign propulsion-generating vehicles to the vehicle systems and/or select locations for the propulsion-generating vehicles in the vehicle system. Typically, these assignments are carried out manually, and may inefficiently assign propulsion-generating vehicles to the vehicle systems. As a result, the vehicle systems may consume more fuel than necessary, operate less efficiently, experience more road failures, and the like, than if the assignment and/or locations of the propulsion-generating vehicles in the vehicle system were performed in another manner.